Mike, Any developer that offers high acutance will accordingly show a sharp, grainy pattern. Solvent developers dissolve the edges of the individual grain particles, which lessens the appearance of grain at the expense of softening edge acutance.(posted 8428 days ago)Basically, there are only two types of developers: acutance and solvent. Anything you do to an acutance developer to lessen the grain prominence (adding sodium sulfite, for example), will bring it into the solvent category, so if you are going to add sodium sulfite, you might as well use D-76, for which the compromise has aready been worked out for you.
My suggestion is PMK. It truly offers the best of both worlds. It is decidedly an acutance developer, but the staining property of pyrogallo masks the grain (stain fills the gaps between the grain particles), thereby yielding an image that is extremely sharp, yet with smooth, fine grain. Many think of PMK as strictly a large format developer, but that is not so. I use it for all formats and find it incomparable, particularly with 35mm. You can use nearly any film and developer combination with 4x5 and get fine grain. 35mm is more demanding because of the small negative, and so the benefits of PMK are even more pronounced than with larger formats.